Kiwibot, an autonomous last-mile delivery droid manufacturer, has partnered with the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to test robotic food deliveries in the neighborhood of Bloomfield.

The program is set to go live in June this year and continue for a period of six months.

The news follows the legalization of delivery robots on sidewalks in the state of Pennsylvania in late 2020. The city first tested delivery droids at the University of Pittsburgh in partnership with a similar delivery droids operator, Starship Technologies, in November 2019.

Kiwibot develops semi-autonomous droids mainly targeting food delivery at university campuses. Earlier this month, the company launched its latest version of the robot “Kiwibot 4.0” in a partnership with Chick-fil-A to make deliveries in California. Additionally, the company extended its partnership with the e-commerce platform Shopify (entered into in July 2020) to include more locations. Other collaborations include online restaurant order management system Ordermark and pizza-making robot developer Piestro (yet to go live). Since its establishment in 2017, Kiwibots have conducted more than 150,000 food deliveries.